MY ILE EPO MARKET EXPERIENCE

    I have always loved shopping. As a kid in the early nineties,  I would accompany my mother to markets and excitedly watch the bargaining and haggling between her and the local market women.

   Sometimes they exchange banters when the negotiation gets all rosy, or just boos when her pricing does not go down well with them.


And as I became older, mum unconsciously arose my interest in shopping by availing me a list of stocks to purchase for the household as incessantly as we could afford it. A pure Lagos mainland bred, of all the markets in my locality, I have always detested the Ile Epo market, majorly because of the stench and then the rowdiness. Never have I come across a market so highly disorganized, chaotic and which oozes a special kind of unfriendly smell my whole life.

Despite the state of this market however, it remains one of the best place to visit for the bulk purchase of food items. Huge trucks would bring in produce from various farms across the country, usually in the wee hours of every other day to deliver them to sellers who in turn re-sell to retailers, or some other end users who buys in larger quantities.

My familiarity with this market also came about from my daily sojourn to work. It is actually a few minute drive from my office, so I found myself having the pleasure of unfortunately smelling the stench of it, one that could be perceived even from as farther as the main road.

Some weeks ago by the way and despite the hate for that market from my end, I was cajoled into visiting by a colleague to go share some baskets of pepper, and then to pick a few other items too. This we knew could be gotten at a cheaper rate in comparison to what is applicable in our various neighborhoods.

And at 6 a.m, I found me stationed at the entrance of the market and somehow, I had to get used to the thickness of the stench as we walked in.

 Common happenstance in this market that is instantly noticeable by anyone that visits; the carriers (those who conveys on their head, baskets of food items from the trucks to the stalls) would shove you as they moved in faster pace. Some would even leave you sprawling if you slack in your walking gait, seeming angry at life in general with the way they’d yell and wait to haul abuses at anyone that dared them. I got a few tongue lashes which I readily reciprocated when a few of them that obviously were perverts, hid under the guise of the queues to touch me in unfriendly areas. 

And another one; is the sight of some group of sellers which is far from being nice. They obviously hail from some parts of the country and like a competition sort of, splashes sphlem into space, totally unperturbed about whose feet it landed on an equally stinking ground. The Ile Epo market is that dramatic.

The business side to the views however; noticeably, there goes these supposedly jobless women, making a living simply by sharing bags of pepper bought in pool to the sellers involved, albeit unbiased and then getting paid in the process. Even though a few buyers from the pool ensue drama anytime she is unsatisfied by her share, there’s always a way around dousing the tension in the end.

Away from this, the state government has begun the building of lock up shops and equally the open ones, which undoubtedly looks modern and I hope this would change the status quo of the Ile epo market. into a widely acceptable standard. Away from the head quarters of stench that we have at the moment.

At the end of this unusual shopping though, I left the market looking all drenched in mud and dirty, smelling so profusely even to myself  that more than four intermittent showers eventually satisfies me.

#Dropspen.